$4000?!?

Many things in Senegal are a few years behind North America. One such ‘thing’ is the average age of the vehicles on the road. The most beaten up, run down, falling apart hunks of metal are serving as taxis and transport vehicles all over the place, both here in the poorer Casamance, as well as in Dakar. As long as there’s a shred of mechanical or structural integrity left in a vehicle, it’s driven. When a vehicle gets abandoned, you’d better believe it was impossible to keep it running for even an hour longer. By North American standards, I'd estimate that at the very least, half of the vehicles driving here would get pulled over and taken off the road back in Canada. At least. Could be much higher if you consider the emissions testing program in the larger centres.

Nestled into its favourite resting spot, the Dispensaire 'steed' contentedly awaits its next call to service...

The Dispensaire vehicle is a Renault Type 18 diesel wagon from the late 80s. It had 64,000+ km on it when the speedometer/odometer stopped working (or was disconnected?) Though we’ve been using it almost daily from the start, we’ve poured in a fair bit of work to improve its condition. If we were in Canada, I’d also say we’d poured in a fair bit of money, but all told, I think the repairs we’ve done, parts and labour, have cost somewhere on the order of $200 to $300. Included are 9 or 10 brake repairs (the hand brake is thankfully quite reliable!), changing all 4 tires (to decent, used tires with tubes), repairs to many lights and other wiring problems, adding side mirrors which were missing, etc. The vehicle is banged up a bit and has many ‘quirks’ that older vehicles tend to get when not well-maintained. For instance, the rear-right door opens from the inside but not the outside. The rear left door didn’t open at all until just recently. It can now be opened from the outside, but not the inside, and even opening it from the outside requires a bit of training and experience! The hatch cylinders do not support it in the upright position (and it’s heavy!). There’s no radio and we took off the antenna since it was flopping around in its bracket, apparently no longer affixable to the vehicle. There are headlights, but the highbeams don’t function. Which is fine because most vehicle that go by us anywhere near dark flash their lights at us as though our lights are blinding them… we’ll be adjusting them soon.

A rare glimpse inside the cockpit of our T-18

For all of their faults, cars are like gold here. Our car, as is, would fetch as much as $4000 (Cdn) here... that's about 2million CFA!... anybody wanna buy a Renault?